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Many salespeople would love to have an assistant — a supporting team member to help them be more efficient, helpful, and effective. You know, a useful sidekick to improve their ability to connect with customers and make more sales.

That’s exactly what you get when you use video. Video enables salespeople and businesses to connect with customers in a more experiential way. Think about it. With a few clicks of a button, a custom video educates and engages customers as they go through the purchasing process.

While there’s a litany of ways that video can boost your business. Here are three proven reasons video should be your number one sales tool.

1. Higher Response Rate

According to Hubspot the average prospect receives more than 100 emails a day and opens only 23% of those and clicks on 2%. Don’t end up in the inbox vortex! Use video to help cut through all the clutter. Using video in your emails will also:

Boost open rates by 19%.

Boost click-through rates by 65%.

Reduce unsubscribes by 26%.

2. Inspire More Action

SalesLoft recently reported that 75% of late-stage prospects that received a personalized video, closed. There’s no question that the human element involved and the time it takes to personalize a video message will show your prospect that you’re willing to go above and beyond the competition.

So there you have it. Like we reported last month, Video is a must have for your business’ content strategy. If you want to sell it, tell it. Have a question about video? We can help. Just reply to this email and we will get back to you immediately.

About the Author: Roshni Hannon Contact: roshni@madbearproductions.com Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.

The future holds many unknowns. But the world of video is a different story. Gather around as we take a look into our Mad Bear Crystal Ball – which no surprise resembles our new Nokia OZO Virtual Reality camera. Take a minute or two to read Mad Bear’s predictions for the world of video in 2017.

360 Video/Virtual Reality will be THE dominant buzz technology of the Year.

3D video, mobile video and even drones have had their time in the “buzz light,” but for 2017 it will be all about 360 Video/VR.

Predictive statistics are already suggesting this will be the case. Here are just some of the resources pointing in that direction:

▪Revenues from virtual reality products (both hardware and software) are projected to increase from 90 million dollars in 2014 to 5.2 billion dollars in 2018. (Read the full Statista report here)

▪Consumer spending on VR headsets will go from 1.6 billion dollars in 2016 to 7.9 billion dollars by 2020 (CNBC)

▪Dip into CES 2017 for a sense of how dominant VR has become already in the shaping of what the word “immersive” means.(Forbes)

2. Sorry Snapchat. Instagram It Is.

#sorrysnapchat

Instagram will continue to use “video stories” to take marketshare from Snapchat. The meteoric millennial monetization (yes… a three part alliteration) rise of Snapchat has come to an end, as many marketers will move away to Facebook owned Instagram (3 more “m’s”… I’m on fire). There was some writing on the wall several months ago when Instagram copied Snapchat and unveiled stories (here is one article from AdWeek) but Instagram isn’t done yet. Look for further integration of video in their platform and look for more ways for businesses to utilize the platform to target ads (a la Facebook). There might even be some expiring video content and/or filters added. While I love your new Spectacles Snapchat. It just won’t be enough.

3. Interactive Video Content Will Move from “Maybe” to “Must Have”

Clickable, shareable, trackable …. it is so nice marketers are ABLE to do these things without ever having to leave a video link. As viewers decreasingly jump between platforms (i.e. “If the content originates on Facebook please don’t send me to a landing page.”), interactive content become the key to keeping people engaged. Interactive in these terms can mean more social media features or even a deeper use of 360 video (see the #1 prediction above).

Here is a good overview article on interactive video from the co-founder of an interactive video company Rapt Media.

So there you have it… three predictions for 2017 … in a way all three say the same thing. Video will move deeper in the direction of consumer initiated engagement. In other words, the video creator will no longer fully control what people experience and how they experience it. Now, the creator is empowered to tell the story so that the viewer can control the experience. So give your viewer the keys, invite them into the driver seat and see where they go. If the ride is good enough, they will come back for more.

About the Author: Glenn Zimmerman

Glenn has what is best described as “Superhero Syndrome.”
His affliction began as a child and has progressed with age.
He got into extreme skiing and extreme sports before they were a thing because every superhero should try flying at least once.

While at Boston University, it was his desire to save the day that brought him to Post- Soviet Russia where he explored the emerging homeless population.

His Syndrome brought him to journalism school at Syracuse University to get his MS in Mass Communications.

He later became an award winning reporter with the number one station in Detroit (WXYZ-TV) and with NBC’s flagship station in New York (WNBC- TV). And, it was the reason he formed the video agency Mad Bear Productions.

With Mad Bear, he harnesses the power of story to help business, non-profits and events engage with their target audience. Video is his tool and he wields it mightily.

Glenn is a sought after speaker on video engagement and mass media. It is all part of his quest to help save the day, one story at a time.

Interactive video is a perfect opportunity to provide customers with a dynamic experience when learning about a product, service, brand, idea, concept, etc… It’s like a custom-tailored suit. By enabling them to shape the way they consume your content, you can offer a more personal interaction with your brand and get them the most relevant information faster. Plus, you get something in the process.

Here are a few ways to make your video more fun, engaging and … interactive.

Clickable Content: Fundamentally, clickable video is any sort of online video that the user can interact with by clicking on it. That can be in the form of video overlays which allow you to display ads/ text without interrupting the content being watched. Different platforms offer different examples of this. Here is one from Wistia where we encouraged people to learn more about our TEAM:

Cards and annotations with YouTube are a simple way to get people to click on additional videos, links to your website, products and merchandise, and more. Cards have some advantages over annotations, like being optimized for mobile and higher click-through rates, but both can be useful. Cards and Annotations are a way to add interactive commentary, including links to your YouTube videos and beyond. See the use of a “Poll” in the video below.

360 Video: 360 video is pretty much just that. Only it’s so much more. It’s created with a camera system that simultaneously records all 360 degrees of a scene. Viewers can pan and rotate a 360 video’s perspective to watch it from different angles. The net effect is a deeper level of immersion into the video. When you strap on some virtual reality goggles/headset… the experience goes to the next level, however, 360 video is viewable on computers, iOS devices and Android devices. If you watch on your computer make sure you’re using the latest version of your web browser (ex. Chrome, Firefox). Google created Google Cardboard which would give you a Virtual Reality-esque experience. The Australian Tourism Board created this 360 video of Rottnest Island. Click and experience it for yourself.

Tourism done right. The Australian Tourism Board gives viewers a 360 video experience. Click and take a tour.

Email Opt ins / Call to Action Buttons: These interactive videos contain social buttons and forms inside the video. They can include email opt in forms (like the video below), buttons (including “buy now” buttons), redirect actions, embedded html, hyperlink text, and more.) While CTAs are great for generating leads, they can also help contribute to a different goal: growing your email list.

Interactive videos give viewers the opportunity to determine how their viewing experience unfolds. In fact, there are some brands that create multiple endings to a video and allow the viewer to select the ending they want to watch. Regardless of your tactics, the more that you can drive engagement, the better the result will be for your brand.

Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.

The importance of music in video is indisputable. It is the subtle guide that commands an audience to sit up and pay attention. The right music can make your video memorable and moving. On the flipside, a mistaken choice of soundtrack can give the wrong impression about a brand, confuse a message and/or simply leave the story flat.

You know what I am talking about. You get a text from a family member and it says “Stop what you’re doing and watch this video.” A distraction from work sounds nice right about now, so you take the bait. A minute later, you’re holding back tears because the video you just watched was that good. And when a colleague stops by your desk to ask what’s wrong, you lie and say “My allergies are just awful today.” Try watching that video on mute; you probably won’t need those tissues this time. Nach says “the power of music to elicit emotional reactions is one of the reasons why it’s often referred to as the language of emotion – and it’s vital you get it right.” Malekpour adds “if you’re producing content that has a high tempo and is a visual feast, you need music that compliments that and carries the energy and tempo of the content… the music is used to keep the attention of the audience, maintain the flow of the video and help it along so that a 2 or 3 minute video doesn’t seem like a long, drawn out watch.” Remember, the music is a main ingredient that pulls them in, pricks their ears and grabs their interest.

2. Pick the right mood

The mood of a piece of music is one of the most important elements to consider when choosing a track for your video. “If I had to pick one of (Mad Bear’s) videos where the music set a mood and a pace it would be a video we did for Attorney Paul Edelstein. Right away the music sets a mood and a pace. And when it changes, it still drives the timing and edits under the voice over. It’s a great example of how music sets mood and determines the pace of a video.” How about music and sports? ESPN’s Monday Night promo for the Giants and Dolphins is a terrific example of how music and image complement each other…especially the first few bars of the Lil Wayne track.

Music sets the mood

3. Use budget wisely

Budget will obviously factor in when it comes to the quality of what you can afford, but a small budget doesn’t mean your video has to appear cheap. “Production music catalogues offer a cost-effective alternative to expensive specially-composed or commercial tracks” says Nach. The internet has also made music more available. “There’s a common thought that if you can license music for next to nothing, then you shouldn’t be paying much more for it. However, you get what you pay for with music, just as you would with any other professional industry…the quality of the writer and composition of the music track, where it builds, where it breaks… the quality of the instruments… the quality of a drum can ruin a music track.” Williams adds that “music and images complement each other. Powerful images can stand alone but they are enhanced with music. And good music with some editing can enhance average images.” Check out how the music takes a fairly simple subject like “How to Choose a Lawyer” and turns it into something sexy.

Music makes your video memorable

So I think we would all agree. When chosen well, music sets the stage and allows your video to shine.

Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.

Predictions are at best an educated guess. I stress educated (think of this as a weather forecast). While we could probably have a full college 101 session about all of these topics, for the sake of time, and quite frankly blog space, I took some pretty bold concepts and turned them into short, digestible paragraphs.

I had a conversation with a pair of thought leaders in the Video Marketing space, David Segura the Founder of Giant Media and Finn Alvaro from Virool and here are the Top Five predictions:

The evolution of media

1. The Future of the Internet is TV

There has been a shift in the living room. The evolution included radio, television and now the Internet. Alvero says “the Internet is becoming more like TV” as brands produce content on a more regular programming schedule. Most millennials don’t subscribe to cable or satellite… so the internet has become the way to reach a entire generation. Segura says “brands are looking to have a video presence online to take advantage of the shift.”

2. Video data will be integrated across the organization

With a lot of talk surrounding big data, companies are looking to refine what they learn with metrics and sort through the clutter. Segura says “video views alone are vanity, but when they are combined with detailed, accurate information about your video assets… that’s a different story. The combined data on audience engagement will dictate initiatives for nearly everyone in the company.” Alvero adds “video marketing platforms will be able to get every marketer analytics and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data.”

3. The press release will become a video!If you have ever read a press release then you know, it can be pretty dry on paper. It’s amazing what a visually interesting video can do. “You just have to hook them in the first 3 to 10 seconds!” says Segura. “A well done video press release can communicate a businesses message, help people understand its actions and get excited about what they’ve seen.”

4. Everyone’s a content provider

With Vine, Snapchat and Instagram, virtually everyone has video tools at their fingertips. That means you can create brand content instantly. Alvaro says “this can be both good and bad depending on your overall video strategy, branding, and your industry. You’re going to need to round up your content marketers to figure out what kind of stuff you want representing your brand.”

A few years ago Valspar was a paint company. Lowe’s was a hardware company. But now brands are becoming publishers and creating channels with their own media. Whether it’s paint or power tools companies are discovering that what drives action many times is video experiences.

Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.

So, you’ve got an awesome HD video you’ve just created, and you’re ready to showcase it on your site. But, before you do that, you want an easy way to see how it’s going to look on your site, and you’d like to have it include colors that match your website colors / theme.

The first thing you can do to see how it’ll look on your site is to take a screen shot of your website and open it up in Photoshop or any other image editing software that you have.

Once you’ve settled on some colors, you can check the HEX codes for the colors that you’ve chosen using the eyedropper or color tool. This provides a quick and easy way to see how your video will look on your website.

To actually implement it, when generating your embed code for the video, plug the HEX codes for the colors used in your design files into the customized Vimeo embed code (more / advanced options). Then, copy the embed code and use it in your site. You’re all set!

A client recently asked us to produce a viral video that is funny. The only other direction was the video also had to tell the viewer how the client’s service works. Now this was a tall order and a fun challenge.

Our leading concept involved turning the company’s logo into a mascot (i.e. a person in an animal costume), doing ridiculous things and than recording the real reactions of people around the silliness. As a result the feeling one gets from the client’s video would be closer to Dollar Shave Club then it would be to one of the new videos we created for Single Throw Internet Marketing…. and that is the simple choice of tone.

One of the first questions I ask a new client is how would you like to be perceived by your audience?

Simply put, do you want to be perceived as whimsical and fun or do you want to come off as serious and buttoned-up?

So here are some things to think about to help you shape the tone of your video:

Is your audience looking to be informed or entertained? And does the audience want to interact with your brand in the process? Now the end video can easily be a combination of all of the above but one of these will be the priority. Their (the audience’s) priority should influence the tone of the engagement.

What is the current perception of the brand? And are you happy with that perception? Changes can inspire a new tone. This is really about following through on your brand. Think of the conservative JC Penney from 10 years ago vs. the current hipper JCP.

Think of the tools you have at your disposal By tools I am talking about music (i.e. classical music vs. hip hop), animation (i.e. cartoons vs. complex renderings), the pace of editing, even the particular environment that you record the video in can help shape tone (i.e. If you are an event company a video shoot at a bar could work. If you are a medical group that might not be the right tone for your image).

I will be posting a “video article” for Streaming Media Producer shortly on this subject. The focus will be to help content producers use the tools at their disposal to shape the tone of the piece.

Please reach out to us at info@madbearproductions.com if you would like a link to that video when it is completed or if you have any questions about tone in general we would love to hear from you.

When most people think about video SEO, they think about getting their video out there. We are going to take a slightly different spin. We believe video can help you with your SEO efforts in 2 ways:

1) Google likes sites that have video

2) if/when you get videos into the search results, your organic listing in the search results will stand out…

People’s eyes will be drawn to the video link. That means more real estate in Search Engine Results and increases click-through rate.

Make sure your video title, description tags are keyword friendly and save video file name and URL in keyword friendly manner. For example, if you are trying to optimize for “How to install a dishwasher”, then make that the title of your video and write a description using “How to install a dishwasher” fairly early in the description.

For each video, when you submit your sitemap you will submit a thumbnail image to Google. This tells them what still image to show in the search results. Be sure to consider an image which you think may be compelling for users to click on as this will increase your click-through rate.

When you place video on your site, put it on a page which is also well optimized for your keywords (meta title, description, keywords, body content, etc). Click here to see some tips from the SEO experts at Blue Fly Web Marketing. Then try getting a few strong links into that page to get noticed by Google.

If you want people to watch the video on your site, we generally think you should host the video through a video hosting company. Look into good video hosting companies like Wistia. If you host on YouTube, there are advantages, but when people click on your video from the search results, they will in almost all cases go to YouTube instead of to your site.

Lastly, consider using a video transcription service. Search engines cannot “read” video- that is why your title and description tags are so important, but they CAN read it if you transcribe it and put the transcription underneath. In addition, your site visitors will appreciate being able to either watch a video or read the transcription as different people have different preferences for processing information.

If you follow these few steps above, we think you are at a nice advantage. Video SEO is fairly new so there is less competition and we think it is a good way to help you stand out in Search Engine Results.

Even if you are not in the financial world, if you saw Eddie Murphy back when he was funny talk about pork bellies in Trading Places you understand a little about commodities.

Gold is a commodity. So is oil. Even time could be considered a commodity but video… a commodity … how do you mean?

First, I am not talking about the common YouTube video of babies, furry animals and craziness caught on camera. I am talking about videos used for business.

Even in this context, obviously video isn’t found in the ground or growing on a tree. However, with the explosive growth of online video over the past several years and the over exposure of poorly produced, uninspired or predictable videos; the perception of video could clearly be seen as “a mass-produced unspecialized product”… with “wide availability” as Merriam-Webster defines a commodity.

Whenever you are thinking about video this needs to be your enemy.

Video should not be a commodity. When approached well, video is a tool specifically designed to do a job. Much like a scalpel or a steak knife. Both cut but don’t hand a surgeon one when he/she calls for the other.

How to uncommoditize your video:

1. Shoot from a certain perspective that is unique. The focus here could be capturing unique images or highlighting uniqueness through what is said. Ideally, you would like to do both.
2. Make sure your video is designed with your audience in mind. Not only should the message speak to them directly but it should be meaningful and hold key takeaway messages that they will remember.
3. Make sure the video is effectively delivered and then tracked (i.e. Google Analytics) that way you can properly make sure it is doing its job.

The title is “A Conversation about Better Video for Business” and that is what we will deliver every month in this newsletter.

It makes sense that video will be the theme of what is found here but we will explore video innovations in a thoughtful way. We will not dumb it down because we are writing and shooting for an informed audience.

Many of our subscribers have the words marketing, advertising, sales and/or public relations in their tittles. These are people who have worked with video before but are perhaps looking for new approaches and technologies to better engage an audience. Other subscribers are business owners who are rethinking their current marketing budgets and considering how video might play a role. There are also hundreds of other people who just want to see what a bunch of video geeks will come up on a monthly basis.
Each issue will have a theme that we will explore in a thoughtful way. This theme will be expanded to our network of experts in supporting areas like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media and Web Development/Design. These experts will be given a platform to add their 2 cents on the theme to help make this newsletter even more robust.

Ok… so you will also get a simple overview of the past month in the world of Mad Bear Productions — complete with news and snippets from our blog.

In future issues, we will perform product tests that will range from cameras to codecs to delivery platforms. The “Experience” will always be a mix of video and text but the content in the video and text will never be the same because while video and text support each other they serve different purposes.

We hope you enjoy and share the “Mad Bear Experience” with your friends and colleagues!